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Beginning
Salt Water Fly Fishing: Flies
Our November 2001 contribution from Nigel Haywood
My brother posted a piece in the Forum recently about flies for saltwater. As ever, it contained wise words: “Why everyone gets worried about saltwater flies defeats me…a big white lure, tied any old way you like but given a lot of movement, is just fine”.
The key to catching the more usual targets – Pollack, mackerel, bass, scad – is seldom in the choice of fly. It is far more important to find the fish, and to be able to get a lure to where they’re feeding without frightening them.
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For the most part, a big white fly will be all you need. You can control the depth at which it fishes by varying the line you use; you can vary your retrieve to change its action. As long as your targets are likely to be chomping bait fish, a big white fly will work. I’m not even convinced that it needs to be particularly imitative: I have often fished in clear water, with fish visibly chasing small sandeels, and been successful with completely disproportionate flies.
So why bother to use different patterns? Lots of possible answers:
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you think that the fly might be improved with additional materials;
• the fish are preoccupied with something else;
• the area you’re fishing is too deep/shallow/weedy/rocky ;
• you want to be famous for inventing a new pattern.
Let’s knock out the last first. We all do it. There’s an almost infinite number of materials out there, and hundreds of ways of putting them on the hook. You’ll catch sea fish under some circumstances on just about anything from a bare hook ( a #2 Mustad 3282 is a whiz for mackerel) to the OTT patterns lovingly set out in Victorian books (my favourite involves gold twist; scarlet and blue hackle; silver pheasant, both natural and dyed yellow; blue jay; and blue, orange and scarlet goose feathers, rounded off with the upper mottled feather of a peacock’s wing). Most patterns are, by now, heavily derivative. By all means give your recipe a name. But please don’t get heavy about it – there are too many tetchy exchanges about who invented what.
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Modern materials give you scope for enhancing your bundle of white feathers. Mylar, EZ Body, Krystal Flash and similar products all provide extra flash and glitter. Remember Julian Grenfell’s line (though not about fly-tying): “life is colour and warmth and light and a striving ever more for these”. Your aim is to give the impression of life from materials which lack it. Pulling in a bundle of feathers with a steady retrieve is not the way to do this. Using materials which are mobile in the water, with varying retrieves, is.
There will be times when fish don’t want to chase other fish. This is when you might go for prawn or crab imitations, or, if you’re after mullet, flies resembling bread, maggots or sea weed. There might also be times – at night, for example – when you want the strongest possible silhouette, and go for a black fly, or something which creates a disturbance, like a slider or popper.
There will also be times when a different approach is called for. A leaded fly will sink quickly, will puff up mud on flats, or will be easier to jig back across the top of weedbeds. When weed reaches nearly to the surface, a floating fly or popper can be retrieved without getting hung up, and will be readily spotted by fish lurking amongst the fronds.
Size, as ever, is often a case of the bigger the better. A 2/0 fly will be dwarfed by the mouth of a big bass. If you’re fishing where there are small pollack, a large fly will also hook fewer (though they’ll still hurl themselves out of the water after it). I’d make an exception for garfish, which will go for large flies, but are difficult to hook with anything much beyond a #6. And mullet, where again #6 is about the biggest I’d want to use. And while you’re at it, you might as well squash the barbs down with pliers.
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So what patterns will give you the best chance of fish in the widest variety of circumstances? I’d go for as few as possible: I firmly believe that persistence with a pattern in which you have faith is more likely to pay off than frequent chopping and changing. I know, I know, I don’t do it either: but I always intend to.
Leaving aside specialist patterns for mullet and garfish, I’d go for the following:
Lefty’s Deceiver
Your desert Island fly. If you were only allowed one pattern, this would be it. Go for Chartreuse/White and Orange/Yellow, the latter particularly for fishing in kelp beds (I fondly imagine them to be taken for small wrasse).
Tail: long hackles, few strands of Krystal Flash; Body: silver mylar; Collar and wing: bucktail; Eyes: painted or stick-on; Head: tying thread, covered with epoxy.
Clouser Deep Minnow
Useful for weedbeds and bouncing along flats, as it swims point upwards. Fish like a jig, with pauses between strips. Cast carefully: it can hit your rod tip like a bullet, in which case it’s game over. Same colours as the
Deceiver
Eyes: dumbbell, tied on top of shank; Wing: bucktail and one or two strands of Krystal Flash, secured fore and aft of dumbbell; Throat: bucktail.
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Newporth Sand Eel
As derivative as patterns get. My simplified sand eel, named after a Cornish rock mark where it has caught all sorts, and in quantity. Very durable. Prismatic eyes and a fluorescent red collar form a distinctive aiming point for predators. A friend caught a 20lb kob on one in South Africa.
Body: silver mylar tube, tied at eye of hook. Wing: blue Krystal Flash. Head: tying thread, with stick on eyes, covered with epoxy. Collar: fluorescent orange wool.
Copper Frede
A terrific ragworm simulator. A Danish sea trout fly. Credit to Martin Joergensen: you can find the pattern on http:globalflyfisher.com/patterns/copperfrede
Fritz
Shrimp
The only prawn pattern you need. Excellent for estuary bass. A useful
variant is tied in white, without the eyes.
Eyes: dumbbell, on top of shank, near the bend; Body: Fritz/Cactus chenille; tail: buck tail/Krystal Flash.
With these five, in various sizes and colours, you’d be equipped to catch more or less anything, home or overseas. But that won’t stop you coming up with things like the brilliant EZ Body and marabou fly that proved so productive for mackerel this year, or the...
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Beginning Saltwater Flyfishing: First, Find your Fish
Beginning Saltwater Flyfishing: Tackling Up: Rods
If you have any questions or comments regarding this article please visit our Saltwater Flyfishing Forum
Nigel Haywood was brought up on the Cornish coast, and has fished in the sea for as long as he can remember. He tied his first saltwater fly over thirty years ago, and over the last ten years has focused almost exclusively on the fly rod. He is writing a book, provisionally titled Flyfishing the British Coast for Merlin Unwin